Hard to believe, but we're heading into our sixth month back in NZ. Unlike three years ago, this point marks the end of the settling in phase rather than the end of the journey. Fitting, then, that we should venture back to the South Island to pick up our travels where last we left off.
To ensure that our summer included at least some semblance of warmth, we started in Akaroa, a tiny originally French outpost on the edge of the Banks Peninsula. This laid-back mini Riviera did not disappoint, and in addition to its onshore charms, Akaroa also provided us an up close encounter with tiny Hector's dolphins, who gave our kayak a quick inspection as we crossed paths in the outer reaches of the harbor.
Having stored up a bit of sunshine, we headed to MacKenzie Country (passing Mt Aoraki on the way).
The big sky landscape reminded us of Montana and Wyoming, with the high-lonesome song in this case the chirp of the incredibly rare black stilt, who are bred in captivity just outside Twizel (many thanks to Jim, our host, for directing us to a spot for viewing them in the wild).
It was about this time that the wind began to rise and mercury began to fall. This made the long drive from Central Otago to Bluff a challenge, and the ferry transit across the Foveaux Strait quite an adventure, but we gutted it out and even managed to scramble up to Observation Point to catch a glimpse of the endless bush before dusk settled into night.
It is hard to describe Stewart Island, simply because there is so little in this world with which to compare it. In Maori cosmology, Rakiura (literally "glowing skies") is
Te Puka o te Waka a Maui, or the anchor of Maui's canoe (the South Island), from which he caught the
Ika (fish) that is the North Island (incidentally, Wellington Harbor is the fish's mouth).
And it really does feel like the end of the world, an older world where the hand of man is far less in evidence. Days are marked by dawn's chorus on Ulva Island and the Kaka calls echoing overhead at dusk. At last light Shearwater wheel around Acker's Point before crashing into the bush clad hills to raise chicks in the same little dugout nests where they and a thousand generations before them were fledged. Night is pierced by the trill and cry of the Brown Kiwi. Offshore, albatross skirt just above the black swells or cluster at the back of the long liners; brief stops in otherwise unimaginably oceanic lives. But for the small township of Oban (
maybe 400 souls), the island is essentially uninhabited. Although the bush is deep, lush and by all appearances intact; man and his entourage of rats, stoats and deer have done their damage here, too, and the relative plenitude of native bird life is but a shadow of the pre-human condition. I say this not to denigrate the experience, but rather to elaborate upon a thought that recurred to me after lying dormant these last three years since we sailed the Fiords; namely, that this, one thousand times over, was Aotearoa before man arrived. In the end, Stewart Island was amazing, but also draining.
After lying low in Invercargill during an evening of hailstorms, we headed up the Catlin Coast. From our base at Pounawea, we explored the stunning variety of this remote southeastern corner of New Zealand. From McLean Falls
to the magical beech forests along the Catlins River
and windswept Surat Bay
where we encountered several sleeping sea lions, including this massive bloke who woke just long enough to flop over to the other side.
After living the previous ten days out of a backpack, we arrived in Dunedin and indulged ourselves with a good long black, a walk through the Botanic Gardens and finished the day with a hand-pumped Emerson's at Albar (just as good as we remembered!). We spent our last day and night at Methven, primarily known as a ski resort an hour outside of Christchurch, but also near Rakaia Gorge, where the fair weather finally found us again.
